Ballot Order: Donkey Voting in Australia

A recent California decision has thrown into sharp relief the benefit received by candidates favorably placed at the top of a ballot. After finding that officials had ordered candidates’ names erroneously, a Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge reversed a close electoral result in the small city of Compton on the basis of statistical evidence drawn from studies of other elections. Ballot order advantage, whilst long a concern to psephologists and candidates, has tended to be seen as a question of the “luck of the draw”—an issue for designing a fairer system of devising ballots, rather than one of corrective justice in an individual race. The initial result in Compton seems extraordinary to an outsider from a jurisdiction where disputed returns are rare and, even if successful, result only in a re-election.1 Such an outcome only makes sense if the successful candidate were linked to proof of manipulation of the draw.